'Swamp Gas' on Mars? - The Green Fog

Originally posted by finishr1
hmmmm, methane, wow, start sending some methane fueled cars now, so the aliens will have something to drive.

They are working on it

MARS1 Humvee...




Mars, methane and mysteries

10 August 2009
Mars may not be as dormant as scientists once thought. The 2004 discovery of methane means that either there is life on Mars, or that volcanic activity continues to generate heat below the martian surface. ESA plans to find out which it is. Either outcome is big news for a planet once thought to be biologically and geologically inactive.

The methane mystery started soon after December 2003, when ESA’s Mars Express arrived in orbit around the red planet. As the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS) began taking data, Vittorio Formisano, Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario CNR, Rome, and the rest of the instrument team saw a puzzling signal. As well as the atmospheric gases they were anticipating, such as carbon monoxide and water vapour, they also saw methane.

“Methane was a surprise, we were not expecting that,” says Agustin Chicarro, ESA Mars Lead Scientist. The reason is that on Earth much of the methane in our atmosphere is released by evolved life forms, such as cattle digesting food. While there are ways to produce methane without life, such as by volcanic activity, it is the possible biological route that has focused attention on the discovery.

“While there are ways to produce methane without life, such as by volcanic activity, it is the possible biological route that has focused attention on the discovery.”

The Mars Express detection of methane is not an isolated case. While the spacecraft was en route, two independent teams of astronomers using ground-based telescopes started to see traces of methane. After five years of intensive study, the suite of observations all confirmed the discovery and presented planetary scientists with a big puzzle.

And then we get to Mumma again...

Methane is thought to be stable in the martian atmosphere for around 300 years. So, whatever is generating the methane up there, it is a recent occurrence. In January 2009, a team led by Michael Mumma of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center published results that the methane they saw in 2003 was concentrated in three regions of the planet. This showed that the methane was being released at the present time and was being observed before it had time to distribute itself around the planet.

www.esa.int...

OK, let's see if with some pictures I can explain better what I said before.

These are the photos used to create the colour version of that image.

For the red channel.


For the green channel, taken 143 seconds after.


For the blue channel, taken 135 seconds after the previous photo and 278 seconds after the first.


(All images are bigger than they appear here, click for full size)

In the first (red) photo there is nothing visible on that area where we can see the green dust (or whatever), but in the second photo (green) we can see what looks like a wide dust-devil. In the third photo we can see that the dust-devil has moved to the left, and looks fainter than in the previous photo, so it was probably loosing energy and disappearing at the time.

As anyone that knows how these RGB images are created knows, something that appears only in one of the images will appear in the final image as being of the colour for the channel in which the object was visible, so the joining of these three images should show a green dust-devil at the middle of the image and a fainter blue dust-devil to the left, and that is what we see.

This is the final result of using the above images to make a colour version.
(Click for full size)


Although faint, it's visible that there is a blue "mist" to the left of the green "swamp gas", as predicted by what was visible on the greyscale images.

That is why I think that this is really an image artefact and not a green dust, mist or gas, it's just the result of how these images are made.

PS: yes, that's a blue sky, before someone asks.
These are the radiometrically corrected images, they give much better looking results.

Originally posted by ArMaP

PS: yes, that's a blue sky, before someone asks.

These are the radiometrically corrected images, they give much better looking results.

Your basalt has too much blue and your sand is too red... but that is a nice version of the Green Smog

And I can still see the snow in those far away mountains




[edit on 9-9-2009 by zorgon]

reply to post by zorgon

The photos were tweaked to look better on their own, so the colours are even less true than usual.

And do you see the blue smog to the left? Or am I the only person that sees that?

[edit on 9/9/2009 by ArMaP]

Sorry ... yes I see the blue mist... I need a closeup though

And I like your twiddled version better than Mike's

reply to post by zorgon

One thing I forgot to say, the colours are a little different from what they should be because there is only the infra-red image and not the red, from what I have seen in other occasions this makes the final image more purple than by using the red filter.

Too bad we don't have the correct filter, but I guess the infra-red gives results that are better for what they want to know with the photos.

Originally posted by ArMaP
That is why I think that this is really an image artefact and not a green dust, mist or gas, it's just the result of how these images are made.

Well I see a few flaws in your logic here...

First the "fog" shows up best in the image you say is the green channel, which indicates that we are seeing it more in green

HOWEVER as you say your three images are at different time intervals so making a composite of three different channels each of which is taken at a different time would not be valid.

You would need the same image/moment in time in the three channels to be a valid image

Consider a Rabbit running across the field of view... (no I don't have a picture of a Martian rabbit )

Your red channel imgage is time zero... then your second image, the green channel is as you say 143 seconds later... that is 2 minutes and 23 seconds... then your third blue channel is another 135 seconds after that, another 2 minutes and 15 seconds

The rabbits out here in Nevada can move a long way in 4 minutes 38 seconds

So if there was a puff of gas released from a vent it may not be in image one, appear in image two and be gone by image three

You say yourself..'if' its a dust devil...

in the second photo (green) we can see what looks like a wide dust-devil. In the third photo we can see that the dust-devil has moved to the left, and looks fainter than in the previous photo, so it was probably loosing energy and disappearing at the time.

So making a color created image of a moving anomaly by your method would not really be conclusive of anything...

But the fact that the Green Fog shows mostly in the Green Channel is certainly significant

reply to post by ArMaP


Nice work. I know you explained the reason why the dust cloud looked green (and blue) back on page one but thanks for taking the time to research and step through the process for the less knowledgeable readers.

Originally posted by ArMaP from what I have seen in other occasions this makes the final image more purple than by using the red filter.

You can always COMPENSATE based on known colors... Lockheed Martin showed you how. Not sure why NASA has such a love affair with those awful dark red images when their own Viking images show the real color...





Color Calibration of Spirit and Opportunity Rover Images
Ron L. Levin
Lockheed Martin IS&S
Building 5, 1300 S. Litchfield Road,
Goodyear, AZ 85338-1599
mars.spherix.com...



OH

And yes folkes Lockheed Martin also says "Blue Skies on Mars"

[edit on 9-9-2009 by zorgon]

reply to post by zorgon


I'm pretty sure the point ArMap is making is that the dust only was present when the green filter was employed.

But the fact that the Green Fog shows mostly in the Green Channel is certainly significant

The only thing that is significant is that it was not there when the blue and "red" filters were used. That is why we only see the green. It was not imaged with the other filters. If it had held still for all three images it would be dust colored.

Originally posted by Phage If it had held still for all three images it would be dust colored.

Fog rarely 'holds still'

reply to post by zorgon

You haven't spent much time in San Francisco I guess, fog does hold still. But dust clouds/devils never do. That's the point.

Here you go:

Three filters + moving dust = ooooohhh prrrretttttyyyyy.

At the top is a composite image combining those exposures to yield a color scene of the Martian ground. The time intervals between the exposures result in the darker dust devil appearing blue at its first location, violet at its second location and yellow at its third location. A second dust devil was consolidating during the first two exposures and appears orange at its location when the third exposure was taken. In the foreground is the northern end of a ridge called "Tsiolkovsky," about 25 meters (about 80 feet) from Troy.

nasa-image.blogspot.com...

[edit on 9/9/2009 by Phage]

reply to post by zorgon

We can only try to compensate the colour of things we know, for the things we do not know we have no way of knowing if they reflect infra-red light in the same they would reflect red light, so if something would reflect red light but absorbed most of the infra-red, it would appear darker in the infra-red filter, giving a final result with little red if we used the infra-red channel while appearing with a normal level of red if we used the red channel.

And you can see by that second image that by using the infra-red channel (the L2) the rocks appear with a stronger blue and the dust a stronger red, just like in "my" version of the photo from the opening post. The sky also appears with a stronger blue.

You can also see by the sun-dial photo you posted that if it was a green "mist" or "swamp gas", in a photo that uses the infra-red instead of the red channel it would look orange, not green, and a more pure blue would appear as pink, subtle changes in colour give very different results when we use different wavelengths.

Originally posted by ArMaP
We can only try to compensate the colour of things we know, for the things we do not know we have no way of knowing if they reflect infra-red light in the same they would reflect red light,

Yes but we KNOW what the rover looks like... if we compensate the picture so that the rover looks correct... then the rest of the images would be correct

So if you take an image that has a rover part in it... or some other known object then you can tell what color the rocks and soil should be....

Example



If the lander is adjusted so it looks correct then the rest of the image is correct. Unless you want to tell me that different parts of the image behave in different ways



[edit on 10-9-2009 by zorgon]

Originally posted by zorgon
Yes but we KNOW what the rover looks like... if we compensate the picture so that the rover looks correct... then the rest of the images would be correct

The problem is that we cannot do it.

Look at the photo you posted.



Now try to correct the "L2, L5 & L6" image to make those two orange patches look green and orange, like they should. You can't, if you change the settings to turn the orange into green then the real orange will look green also, so you are getting the greens back but you are loosing the oranges, turned also into greens. If you don't correct the image you get the oranges but you loose the greens, so there is no way of distinguish between orange and green when we have a photo made with the L2, L5 and L6 filters.

I don't know (and I don't have any way of knowing it) if there are more colours that react in this way.

Edited to add: yes, different parts of the image may react in a different way, because the way they react to the different wavelengths.

[edit on 10/9/2009 by ArMaP]

Originally posted by ArMaP
PPS: And why didn't he posted it himself instead of using you as a proxy poster?

You didn't hear?? Mike is no longer among us......

temp-ban and never came back....to bad, i miss his threads!!!

Good thread Zorgon.....S+F

Peace

Thanks ArMaP, phage, zorgon for a very interesting read, this page.

Thing is, until or unless we get Human eyes there, and maybe even photographic film (although even THAT may not be sufficient) this will be argued ad infinitum.

I'd even go so far as to suggest that when it comes to the perception of color, there must exist a minor degree of fluctuation in the interpretation between individuals. I've even noticed VERY minor differences between my own two eyes, when looking one, then the other. Depending on variable lighting conditions.

And, lest we forget, there are varying degrees of what's called color "dumbness" (not blindness) that occurs in some individuals. PLUS we're all sitting here looking at a picture of a picture, then at our monitors, right?

AS TO photographic film, I don't know much about how it can be processed to alter the hues, except for a (possibly exagerrated) story of the early days of shooting the Star Trek TV pilot episode, with the green Orion slave girl.

Story goes, some technician at 'Technicolor' labs saw the green woman, and said "My God, she's green!!" and altered the image to make her pink, (remember, this was 1964. SF on telelvision wasn't very common...)...confounding Gene Roddenberry and the other producers when they viewed the 'rushes' the next day. "Make her greener!!" is alleged to have been the order given by the The Great Bird of the Galaxy, as Roddenberry was called. The poor make-up department was at their wits' end.....
______________________________________________
adding video, though I'm sure most people have seen these test charts before...








[edit on 10 September 2009 by weedwhacker]

Originally posted by weedwhacker
PLUS we're all sitting here looking at a picture of a picture, then at our monitors, right?

A picture of a picture? Why do you say that?

One thing I noticed and that most people are not aware is that LCD monitors may show less colours than CRT monitors. Many laptops, for example, use 6 bit LCDs, that show fewer colours, and in those cases people still see a colour but not the one it should be, that's why I asked if other people saw the blue dust on the photo.

reply to post by ArMaP


"picture of a picture" was my funny way of saying it's been processed many times, digitally, before any of us get to see it.

And, thanks for better technical terms for the CRT/LCD monitor issue, when it reaches the different people's computers.

(Yes, I can see a bit of grayish-blue too. On a flat-screen I assume LCD desktop monitor....ViewSonic VA702b)

Originally posted by ArMaP
The problem is that we cannot do it.

Of course we can...

1) Take a picture of the Rover thingy taken on Earth...

2) Then take one taken on Mars...

3) Open your favorite image program...

4) Place them beside each other...

5) adjust the color slider till the one on Mars matches the one on Earth...

Piece of cake... any kid can do it

And all this BS of color blind people, different eyes etc is just a red herring to obfuscate the issue

If your color blind and you do the above steps you will still get the same results relative to your personal vision

But we are talking here about what the norm is... trying to misdirect the issue with nit picking things like color blindness etc is misdirection and a joke... MOSt people see color a certain way. Our monitors TV's and color images have a standard setting

But even that is irrelevant because if you are looking at the same object in a photo taken on Earth or one on Mars... if the two are matched to look the same... that is all you need and you don't need the filters


Here are some pictures taken on 'Blue Rock Mars' of some known items

This is a Green Apple




This is a Macintosh Red Apple...



If I put those images beside the original 'Normal Earth" photos.. it will only take a few minutes to compensate those colors